As rural hospitals in the U.S. push to ensure long-term financial sustainability, healthcare leaders are encouraging a focus on collaboration to strengthen overall outcomes.
The Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform’s most recent analysis found that 720 rural hospitals, or around one-third of all rural facilities across the nation, are at risk of closure due to financial challenges, highlighting the importance of securing innovative solutions that provide results.
Chris Harrison, CEO of Brentwood, Tenn.-based Quorum Health, said during Becker’s Rural Healthcare Leadership Summit that successful rural facilities must be willing to think outside the box to find ways to partner.
“When you get into those discussions, there’s actually real value there and real discussions that can be had with these other partners that can help both facilities, both systems, or whatever it is that you’re trying to partner with,” he said. “I think that’s the difference, being willing to show up to the table humble and show up to the table to say, ‘We’re just trying to do what’s best for our patients and for our community and survive in a way, and how can we help each other.'”
While partnerships can prove useful for hospitals to expand resources and services, leaders said success can also depend on ensuring strong physician networks.
Louis Thomas, vice president of operations for UNC Health Medical Group, highlighted the importance of maintaining a strong primary care foundation in tandem with creative problem-solving efforts.
“Creative solutions are huge, and I see that a lot when thinking outside the box,” Mr. Thomas said during the panel discussion. “From a medical group perspective, the one key thing is you have to have a medical staff [and] a primary care base that’s thriving, and that they are supportive of their hospital, and they’re going to refer your specialists and keep your hospital busy.”
Steven Massey, president and CEO of Western Wisconsin Hospitals & Clinics, said regional collaboration can be a key factor in moving beyond survival mode. He shared an example of a cancer center in New Richmond, Wis., that was formed through a joint venture among six critical access hospitals, including independent facilities and hospitals owned by HealthPartners.
The partnership was created after local leaders decided that collaborating would serve patients more than competition, reducing the need for residents to travel long distances for cancer treatment.
“Thinking outside the box, not thinking that you have to try to survive or reinvent yourself on your own and looking at those regional partnerships, even with organizations that you’re competing with in some service lines, [it] doesn’t mean you can’t collaborate and partner in other service lines,” Mr. Massey said. “As the hospital leaders have changed over the years, that joint venture has stayed in place, and that partnership around cancer care has maintained. I think all six communities are better today in terms of the care that they’re providing locally around cancer care than they were prior to that partnership.”
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